Tories call for Emergency Debate on security breach coverup

April 12, 2018 at 12:00 pm

MacFarlane wants answers from McNeil government

Progressive Conservative leader Karla MacFarlane says there are serious questions around the McNeil government’s coverup of the security breach.

Today, the PCs called for an emergency debate in the legislature to get answers for the thousands of Nova Scotians whose personal information was compromised. One of the most troubling parts of this issue is that the Premier and the Minister of Internal Services both said the police had asked them to delay making the breach public. However, yesterday the Halifax Regional Police said no such conversation ever took place.

“We are very concerned about the McNeil government’s coverup of this security breach,” says MacFarlane. “It calls into question the integrity of this government and their ability to handle people’s personal and sensitive information. People’s lives could have been ruined and they will be the last to know.”

In 2015, Pictou East MLA Tim Houston raised serious questions about the lack of controls in place to protect community services clients. He introduced a Bill in the legislature that would require the government to notify people when their personal information had been breached. The Liberals refused to pass it. He reintroduced the bill today.

MacFarlane says people have to be able to trust the government with their personal information and intimate details of their situations but this has broken that trust.

“We have so many questions about what happened and how people will be notified that their information was so easily accessed on the government’s website,” says MacFarlane. “We are worried about the security of all the other government sites and whether more people are at risk because of the government’s lack of security controls.”